Comfort During Labor
Your birth plan, your way
Each woman’s labor is unique, and each woman experiences labor differently. To meet your unique preferences and medical needs, we offer a wide range of choices, with a goal toward making your labor experience what you want it to be. Should you desire it, our obstetric anesthesia team is on-site 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to provide the right level of comfort to make your birth experience ideal.
Vaginal delivery
We offer regional (epidural and spinal) techniques that will improve your comfort without reducing your ability to push well in the second stage of labor. To maintain your comfort, we also offer patient-controlled epidural medication, putting you in charge of how much of anesthetic medicine to give yourself. Early in labor, we can also offer local, intravenous or intramuscular medications that can reduce discomfort.
Cesarean-section delivery
To ensure your comfort during surgical delivery, we offer regional comfort techniques (spinal and epidural) that allow you to be awake and alert to participate in the birth of your baby. Our anesthesiologists also provide post-operative pain relief with techniques that minimize drug dosage and enable you to become mobile more quickly, breastfeed and care for your baby.
Advancing Care
Our clinical research studies have resulted in many advances in obstetric anesthesia and improvements in the safety of pain relief techniques. We may invite you to participate in some studies and appreciate your time and energy in helping us advance our field.
Learn more
You can learn more about options for comfort during labor at our Birth Center Orientation class for parents. Your doctor may also ask that you view some important information using an online education program called Emmi® to prepare you for your labor and delivery. This program takes about 20 minutes and will help you understand your anesthesia choices and let you know what to expect the day of your procedure.